DOCUMENTAL
June 2008
PILOT Projekt Düsseldorf
September/ October 2008
Guggenheim Gallery / Chapman University, Orange CA
The exhibition DOCUMENTAL was a video exchange project between artists in Düsseldorf and artists in Los Angeles organized by artist collective Nüans in Düsseldorf and Los Angeles artists, Micol Hebron and Kim Schoenstadt. The first part took place in July presenting L.A. artists in Düsseldorf, then video works of young German artists were composed and presented at
Chapman University. The choice of the works was focused on their documentary character sometimes including the process of their own production. The four selected artists share an intense interest in processes of film making and consuming.
Artist included in the exhibition were:
Düsseldorf artists: Anina Brisolla, Marcus Herse, Eli Cortiñas Hidalgo, Kao Okada.
Los Angeles artists: Angela Ellsworth, Nancy Popp, Summer Shiffman, Kevin Young and Kent Young.
Anina Brisollas’ work plays with the transfer of media, the translation from real world to scale-model on to video, referring again to another medium: that of painting and drawing. The images in Marcus Herse's Video Installation Organize" are constantly renewing constellations. Interconnecting four views from life: art making, animal behavior, human communication and the graphic symbols of a fictitious sign language. Eli Cortiñas’s Dial M for Mother uses Hitchcockian suspense and beauty to explore the human longing for identity and autonomy. In Kao Okada’s The Point scenes from her daily routine are given new meaning when subtitles from litterature are added, her hope is for moments of her life “to obtain a tangible meaning“.
In Nancy Popps work she clings to street poles, in different scenic locations throughout Los Angeles and San Francisco often times going unnoticed playing with concepts of protection and surveillance. In Hot Air, Tania Katan performs air guitar to Queens 'Keep yourself alive' and with her own androgyny, brings into question issues of constructed identities. Summer Schiffman's PBJ explores the line between eroticism and repulsion. Twins Kevin Young and Kent Young tandem physical activities explore aesthetic and genetic mirroring. Each artist explores different aspects of the city’s contaminated elegance.